There’s some lapis lazuli I guess, but it’s mostly a subsistence, agrarian-type economy. You’d be hard-pressed to show the US profiting from the opium; they actually destroyed quite a lot of the crops they could get their hands on. Just because of the amount of area it covers there’s geological deposits of other things, but it’s undeveloped.
It’s an exceptionally poor, sparsely populated tract of dry steppe that’s famous for baiting in and devastating empires. The US invaded to get Bin Laden, and then stayed because a critical mass of their elite genuinely wanted to fix it before going.
It’s also a good place to do a real life test of (actual) weapons of mass destruction. A showroom of violence for potential buyers across the world.
That’s true of anywhere you want to blow up, so by that measure your goalpost is literally anything happening.
That’s a massive oversimplification. The US has always had active domestic politics and many competing factions driving it’s policy.
What money did Afghanistan have?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan
I’m sure there were other things/resources to extract/control there, but this is the one I know and remembered off the top of my head.
It’s also a good place to do a real life test of (actual) weapons of mass destruction. A showroom of violence for potential buyers across the world.
There’s some lapis lazuli I guess, but it’s mostly a subsistence, agrarian-type economy. You’d be hard-pressed to show the US profiting from the opium; they actually destroyed quite a lot of the crops they could get their hands on. Just because of the amount of area it covers there’s geological deposits of other things, but it’s undeveloped.
It’s an exceptionally poor, sparsely populated tract of dry steppe that’s famous for baiting in and devastating empires. The US invaded to get Bin Laden, and then stayed because a critical mass of their elite genuinely wanted to fix it before going.
That’s true of anywhere you want to blow up, so by that measure your goalpost is literally anything happening.